Steve was at the farm last night so I let Caroline and Edward fall asleep in my bed. Then I spent fifteen minutes walking around the house trying to figure out where I had put my phone so I could listen to a book* while I cleaned the kitchen. Eventually I gave up, used the phone finding thing and waited until it went off like an air-raid siren.

It was in my room.

On the bedside table, actually, so before I could scurry in to silence it, Caroline had shot straight into the air, a gaffed salmon.

"What?" she shouted. "Was that an Amber Alert? Where am I?"

I blinked. An... Amber Alert?

"Shhh. You're fine, you're in my bed," I whispered.

"Oh," she said. "Where's Edward?"

I patted around until I found that nice round head of his.

"He appears to be lying on top of your legs. Do you want me to move him?"

But, reassured that she was not, in fact, a missing child, Caroline had fallen back asleep again.

*For... well, for reasons it has been months since I have been able to listen to anything more stressful than an Agatha Christie and I think I have now gone through them all. No, that's not true. I finished all of the ones that are neither terrible (Passenger to Frankfort, The Big Four, The Caribbean Mystery, et cetera) nor too depressing (And Then There Were None, Murder on the Orient Express, anything with Miss Marple written after the war) but even with those exceptions it was still a whole lot of Christie. And very soothing I found them, too; there is something charming about an age in which one person could murder another with hat paint and it would be seen as an accident.

So that is my recommendation for the day. Go to the library and get an Agatha Christie. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, maybe. I would argue - in fact I would love to argue; would you like to argue with me on this one? - that it is the best mystery she wrote.

PS A downside of this overdose on the Golden Age of Crime is that I share my audible account with Steve. Every time I bought a new one it would show up on his phone, too, and since Steve has spent an inordinate (let me italicize that again for even more emphasis - an inordinate) amount of time lately sitting in trees with nothing else to do but listen to my audiobooks he goes around the house saying, "But no! It is imbecile what you say there, mon ami. You must use the little grey cells."

Thank heavens I'm temporarily off the kilt-rippers; Steve would be absolutely unbearable.

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Waking To Find Yourself On A Milk Carton-obia

Steve was at the farm last night so I let Caroline and Edward fall asleep in my bed. Then I spent fifteen minutes walking around the house trying to figure out where I had put my phone so I could listen to a book* while I cleaned the kitchen. Eventually I gave up, used the phone finding thing and waited until it went off like an air-raid siren.

It was in my room.

On the bedside table, actually, so before I could scurry in to silence it, Caroline had shot straight into the air, a gaffed salmon.

"What?" she shouted. "Was that an Amber Alert? Where am I?"

I blinked. An... Amber Alert?

"Shhh. You're fine, you're in my bed," I whispered.

"Oh," she said. "Where's Edward?"

I patted around until I found that nice round head of his.

"He appears to be lying on top of your legs. Do you want me to move him?"

But, reassured that she was not, in fact, a missing child, Caroline had fallen back asleep again.

*For... well, for reasons it has been months since I have been able to listen to anything more stressful than an Agatha Christie and I think I have now gone through them all. No, that's not true. I finished all of the ones that are neither terrible (Passenger to Frankfort, The Big Four, The Caribbean Mystery, et cetera) nor too depressing (And Then There Were None, Murder on the Orient Express, anything with Miss Marple written after the war) but even with those exceptions it was still a whole lot of Christie. And very soothing I found them, too; there is something charming about an age in which one person could murder another with hat paint and it would be seen as an accident.

So that is my recommendation for the day. Go to the library and get an Agatha Christie. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, maybe. I would argue - in fact I would love to argue; would you like to argue with me on this one? - that it is the best mystery she wrote.

PS A downside of this overdose on the Golden Age of Crime is that I share my audible account with Steve. Every time I bought a new one it would show up on his phone, too, and since Steve has spent an inordinate (let me italicize that again for even more emphasis - an inordinate) amount of time lately sitting in trees with nothing else to do but listen to my audiobooks he goes around the house saying, "But no! It is imbecile what you say there, mon ami. You must use the little grey cells."

Thank heavens I'm temporarily off the kilt-rippers; Steve would be absolutely unbearable.